Walter Skya

The Great European War and the Rise of Radical Shintō Ultranationalism in Japan

On 28 June 1914, Bosnian Serbian nationalist extremist Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austria–Hungary Empire, and his wife Sophie von Chotkovato, in the city of Sarajevo in the empire’s province of Bosnia-Herzegovina. A chain reaction of declarations of war soon followed, and within two months all the great powers of Europe found themselves at war. It was to be the beginning of a particularly savage war that would brutally and senselessly kill more than 15 million people before an armistice was signed on 11 November 1918. The war produced material destruction and a catastrophic loss of life on a scale unmatched up to that time.

Trajectories of Nationalisms in East Asia

Globalization is a concept that has dominated much of the intellectual discourse on world affairs in the United State and Europe in the last decade. This notion of globalization has even penetrated the popular consciousness in recent years. Globalization implies the process of becoming one—the integration of the peoples of the world into a collective unit. Some thinkers have argued that the forces of globalization are irresistible, and that these forces are weakening the nation-state, which will eventually lead to its irrelevance, or even to its demise. Much of the discourse on globalism, however, is driven by Americans and Europeans. While Westerners stress the onslaught of the forces of globalization—this process of the peaceful international integration of ideas, world views, and cultures as well as goods and products—the appeal of nationalism, national assertiveness, and national military power have been growing alarmingly in East Asia in the last two decades. In other words, there is much evidence to indicate that the recent massive wave in the globalization of manufactured goods, capital flows, and service industries and the wealth that all this has brought to East Asia is not contributing to a convergence of fundamental value systems and world views. On the contrary, it has fueled nationalist ambitions and expectations, exacerbated long-smoldering historical hostilities, and spawned new nationalist passions among East Asian nations.

The Great Transformation of Japanese Capitalism ed. by Sébastien Lechevalier (review)

In The Great Transformation of Japanese Capitalism, Sébastien Lechevalier writes that “the ambition of this book is to offer a very different account from what is usually accepted about the trajectory of [the] Japanese economy since the early 1980s” (p. 158). He notes that until the end of the 1980s, the performance of Japan’s economy was regarded as clearly superior to those of the United States and Europe. However, the dominant viewpoint today is that Japan is inescapably on a downward slope. Lechevalier states that from a neo-liberal viewpoint, the stagnation of the Japanese economy is caused by the failure of the Japanese socioeconomic system to adapt to a new global and technological environment. He challenges this neo-liberal view, however, arguing that the neo-liberal solution to the Japanese economic crisis is, in fact, one of the causes of the problems that Japan has faced over the past thirty years. In Chapter 1, “Thirty Years of Neo-Liberal Reforms in Japan,” Yves Tiberghien provides a chronology of the structural reform process of Japanese capitalism over the past thirty years and offers an explanation for this process. In Chapter 2, Lechevalier discusses the evolution of the model of the Japanese fi rm. Characteristics of the classic Japanese fi rm—such as its employment practices, corporate fi nance, and corporate governance—have been evolving, but Lechavalier rejects the notion that this evolution is leading into a convergence of the Japanese fi rm with the Anglo-Saxon or liberal model of the fi rm. Rather, he fi nds an increasing diversifi cation among Japanese fi rms. In Chapter 3, Lechevalier shows that there has been a decline in the classic Japanese forms of coordination of the economy. However, he also argues that this has not been replaced by market-driven forces. Instead, the classical forms of coordination in Japanese-style capitalism have been replaced by new forms of collaboration. In Chapter 4, Lechevalier discusses the rising level of inequality, fear of downward social mobility, and employment security in Japan: “Social protection in Japan was not accompanied by massive public

A Review of “Japan in World History”

field, having served with the Grenadier Guards in Hong Kong in the mid-1970s. A novel aspect of this work is that it includes the unpublished memoirs of John R. Harris, a subaltern in the Royal Engineers who fought in the battle and was subsequently interned by the Japanese for four years. Harris, today a distinguished architect, is the only surviving member of a group of prisoners who secretly passed information to British intelligence during captivity. The Battle for Hong Kong is a book with a split personality. In the first half, Lindsay offers a brief summary of the events leading up to the conflict and the situation in Hong Kong on the eve of war; introduces the reader to Harris’s memoirs describing prewar life, and then turns his attention to the battle for Hong Kong; which lasted from December 8 to December 25, 1941. Although this section includes a detailed description of the battle itself, the author often interrupts the narrative to make comparisons to his own experiences serving in Hong Kong or to the current military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan; occasionally, he breaks to address the reader directly. Lindsay’s observations may have value for the reader, but they disrupt the flow of the narrative and diminish its clarity. The sequence of events is also difficult to follow, especially for readers unfamiliar with the details of the campaign. This section is, thus, better suited for the informed military enthusiast than one seeking an introduction to the campaign. The last half of the work, which is largely told through Harris’s memoirs, covers the four-year period of British, Canadian, and Indian internment in Japanese POW camps. Harris’s personal story is engaging and gives a human face to this largely overlooked piece of history. Of particular interest, Harris describes his participation in smuggling messages to the British Army Aid Group (BAAG), a cover for what can most accurately be compared to Britain’s MI9 (Escape and Evasion). Harris was one of the first POWs to establish contact with the BAAG; in stark contrast to many of his fellow POW collaborators, he survived to tell about it. Harris’s story of endurance, perseverance, and survival is well worth reading. Although The Battle for Hong Kong provides little new information regarding the battle itself, it becomes clear that Lindsay’s chief purpose is to highlight the heroism of the veterans of the Hong Kong campaign and to rehabilitate the “tragically maligned” reputation of the British Royal Scots and Canadian forces (150). After the war, the Middlesex Regiment received the battle honour Hong Kong, whereas the others came under harsh criticism. Lindsay explains that the defenders of Hong Kong, through no fault of their own, were ill prepared for war, lacked proper training, were grossly undersupplied, and had faulty intelligence about Japanese intentions. Lindsay argues convincingly that, under such daunting circumstances, the men fought with gallantry and extreme courage. On the whole, Lindsay’s work is based on solid research and enhanced by numerous memoirs, diaries, reports, and official documents—some of which belong to the author. Lindsay also conducted over 100 interviews of veterans and Chinese civilian survivors, which he references frequently throughout the work. Finally, he draws on the recollections of several senior Japanese officers who participated in the capture and control of Hong Kong. Despite some shortcomings, Lindsay supplies a thorough account of the illfated battle for Hong Kong. Likewise, Harris’s personal story gives us unique insight into the struggles and activities of the defenders-turned-prisoners-ofwar. Although Harris’s memoirs contain popular appeal, the overall target audience of the work is limited to the veterans of the Hong Kong campaign and military buffs specifically interested in the Allied campaigns in the Far East. WHITNEY T. BENDECK Florida State University Copyright

Fascist Encounters: German Nazis and Japanese Shintō Ultranationalists

In his comprehensive history of World War II, military historian John Keegan described it as “the largest single event in human history, fought across six of the world’s seven continents and all its oceans. It killed fifty million human beings, left hundreds of millions of others wounded in mind or body and materially devastated much of the heartland of civilization.”1 Most educated Americans believe that this vast conflict began with Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, if not with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Very few would cite the “Marco Polo Bridge Incident” of July 8, 1937 or the “Manchurian Incident” of September 18, 1931 as the start of this greatest war of all times. Yet World War II arguably started with the 1931 Japanese attack in Manchuria, it became truly a global war with the entry of the United States following the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and it ended in East Asia with Emperor Hirohito’s surrender speech on August 15, 1945. Similarly, the majority of authors of the thousands of books and articles about this great struggle have a decidedly Western perspective, thus the importance of the Asian component of the conflict is often overlooked and some major issues are neglected.